


A Ghost Story

by EmilyElm



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hannidinner, M/M, New Town, Other, because of scars, birthday cake gets ruined, dark furniture, hiding out, how do you start over After Hannibal?, new Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 22:43:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11473188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmilyElm/pseuds/EmilyElm
Summary: Will tries to start over after Hannibal's trial and figures out his future with the help of ghost-daughter Abigail.  He embraces the power of a good woman to keep the monsters at bay.





	A Ghost Story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hesterbyrde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hesterbyrde/gifts).



> This is for Birdie's birthday. Here's to hoping next year your wish for S4 will come true.

Unconditional love and forgiveness. 

It had alluded Will most of his life. Like a dream. But in the cool grotto of his imagination, he’d find a semblance of it with Abigail. 

And then he would remember Abigail made it to Italy, as promised. She was at peace there. He, too, wants to find a semblance of peace on earth. Where Hannibal does not haunt his every waking moment. He wants a break from the memories. But they come unbidden. Even his hobbies are tainted with blood. He had to give up making fishing ties. What he had done in her name makes him sick now. 

He takes long walks instead. His thoughts drift often to the lessons to be found in his life. An answer, a prize, the golden ticket has to be somewhere amongst all the drama. He returns again and again to what he and Abigail wanted to create with Hannibal. Family. He hadn’t understood what she’d been trying to tell him until she was gone, but now he understood: family as salvation, his second chance, some sacred space where he can heal. 

He stitches up his own version of a happy mask and starts going out more. He still catches a glimpse of Hannibal everywhere and in everyone. He hadn’t realized he was invoking him until he complained to a vet assistant that he was dating that the dog food they were serving at the kennel didn’t quite measure up. When he realizes what he was comparing it to and that he was okay with that, he doesn't go back to that particular clinic again. 

He goes back to his cabin by the pond. He sands down wood to make the bench for his dining room table to replace the antler chairs he put out on the porch. When even his dogs seem bored by the isolation, he takes a good, hard look in the mirror. He is a living ghost. His person suit is in need of some patching up, some TLC. He had tried performing his own emergency triage. But a procedure that large could not be done on its own.

He needs to get back on that horse. He goes to a networking breakfast the Chamber of Commerce in town is throwing. He is given a lot of business cards by divorced women. An unfortunate association. That breakfast was quite a setback. He stays home for some time after that. 

So he had all but given up on himself. He goes into town only for the sake of the dogs. Even at the dog park, he stays in his head, recalling the best of times and the worst of times. 

And then he bumps into her. Molly Foster. He wasn't paying attention and their leashes get tangled up somehow. She goes gaga over the dogs. She says “so many dogs” like it’s not a bad thing. She looks at him like he’s not a bad thing as they sit outside the coffee shop.

As painful as it is to go out and be amongst people, he promises himself to continue doing it for the sake of Abigail’s memory. So that everything she went through would not be for naught. After going on a few dates, he knows he’s selfishly going out for himself. He had grown up with a father who had given him the tools to survive – reading him the Brothers Grimm and warning him all about the monsters in the world, teaching him how to fish, and that when he fell off the bike, to get back up and hop on again. 

He’d be damned if he was going to give Hannibal the satisfaction of letting him completely ruin his life. 

He has his moments. He allows himself a five-minute pity party on particularly bad days. If he hadn’t, he would have spent the whole day in bed replaying all of the times he could have changed things for the better. Where Abigail would actually be walking the streets of Florence with her fathers.

The only problem is Molly. When he doesn’t resurface a few times, she calls around for him. She’s persistent like that. She’s crafty in the way she leaves messages for him. After all, it’s a small Maine town. He stands out like always, the new guy, taking up residence on the edge of town. So at the boat shop and the vet and the market, sideways glances were shot his way and a parting shot: “She’s looking for you.”

He prefers to see her at night. There's a lot of heavy making out in their cars. Always undressing each other in the dark. Better to hide his scars there. He considers what he’ll tell her about those scars. 

The truth has consequences. Lies of omission are so much easier and efficient. And there is the half-truth – his battle scars were procured in the line of duty. He doesn’t have to go into detail that he had wrapped his arms around Hannibal when the knife went in.

“Will?”

He jumps out of his skin. His pulse pounds. He steadies himself and focuses. 

He stands in the window, looking at the pond. Who knows for how long he’s been standing there, thinking about that night when he had gained everything and it was all taken away from him? 

Daylight streams through the windows. Only one person would search for him around town, sweet talk the postman for his address and drive all the way out to the last place he could be today. 

He approaches the screen door and appreciates the breeze feathering through his curls. The screen casts Molly in a dark net, as if caught by a sea monster. She smiles through it. Her teeth glinting in the shadows. 

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” she greets.

“You don’t,” he corrects. “You didn’t.” 

The dogs adore her. They don’t bark around her. They roll over. If anyone made any warning noises, she did. 

But he doesn’t open the door. She continues rubbing bellies. He stares through the squares of light at her. She takes the initiative and straightens, holding out a box for him. 

“I brought you something. For your day.”

“Shouldn’t have, Molly.”

He looks around. She is going to make him open the door in hot glare of the sun. Where the jagged line across his head could not be mistaken for what it is. He feels the blood pouring down his face and shudders in the heat of the day. 

To mask this, he does her bidding. It’s easier and it’s not.

“Please come in,” Hannibal’s greeting escapes him as he steps aside to let her in. He could kick himself for this ingrained response. He doesn’t have to let everyone in so willingly. He could protect this actual fort of his. He can shut everyone out. They could have sat outside on the porch, where it’s safe. 

And then he looks at her. She’s a sweet, kind woman with zero ties to the FBI. Thinking she’d take a pot shot at him is only something his friends at the BAU and elsewhere would do. 

He lingers at the door, taking his time to glance outside as he closes it. He can almost imagine all the townsfolk laughing at him. They conspired to give her this needed push, proud of her sheer determination to have vaulted over this, seemingly, last wall. 

She makes herself right at home. Marches in the kitchen and grabs a plate out of the cabinet and pulls her cake right out of the box. She presents it to him in a flourish and he casts his head down, shy. 

“I didn’t want the day to go by and not celebrate it,” she states, so earnest. 

That’s his Molly. Kind to strangers. And dogs.

“You didn’t have to,” he tells her, “but thank you.”

She closes the distance between them and kisses him, softly. He forces himself to close his eyes. Loses himself in the sensation…

And his imagination, as always goes with it. The barren table is bright and cluttered now with a feast. The design straight out of a magazine. Cuts of flowers and greens adorn the lace tablecloth. Fine china and Lalique crystal glassware squeeze between the bouquets. All of his favorite dishes, including the pork stir-fry that Hannibal made, overflow along the center seam. The smells remind him of home. He is genuinely touched by the gesture. Until, over Molly’s shoulder, he sees Chiyoh sweeping in with a cutting board of homemade biscuits and butter, honey and preserves. She reaches for the glasses to pour whiskey. There’s a tinkling of delight that fills the room, of laughter and music that he’d know anywhere.

Will blinks. Exhales. He reminds himself he knows exactly where Hannibal is. That he’s safe here, in his home. He’s with a woman, if, he were a smart man, he’d ask to make his wife. 

She peers into his eyes, concerned by the storm brewing there.

“Where’d you go?” she asks, her eyes darting back and forth.

“Nowhere,” he sighs. 

And it’s the truth, he realizes. He doesn’t have to go anywhere when Hannibal is just a thought away. 

He strokes her hair out of her face. Takes her head in his hands. Unlike with Hannibal, he doesn’t feel like squeezing the skull until it bursts. This is good. 

“I’m here with you,” he promises. 

The sun is hot on his face. The cabin heats up like an oven around this time every day. He usually is out by now. He considers asking her to go for a walk with him. And how that will sound like avoidance. He’s dodged her enough and he should reward her for catching him like she has.

Her fingertips lift up and touch the scar on his forehead. His cheek. He doesn’t flinch. He meets her gaze. 

Her empathy pulls at him. It’s not quite pity. She treasures the pain and the beauty he acquired simultaneously. Like Margot did. And besides, she never knew him before he was unmarked.

He imagines Margot now, with the new edition, her C-section scar across her stomach. It looked a lot like his stomach scar does now. 

His fist is clenched at the hem of his shirt. Molly presses her hand against his and he releases it. Watches as she unbuttons the shirt. 

“You crossed a lot of bad guys in your line of work?” Molly says by way of explanation. 

He had told her he was retired from the FBI. He hadn't said why. He wants to laugh, but a forced smile pulls on his lips instead. If he cares to admit it, he’s afraid to say Hannibal’s name out loud. Afraid that it might invoke him and release him to the wind. She brushes her lips against his again.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want…”

“I should explain,” Will sighs, “if we’re going to do this.”

By this Will means gets closer. Take it to the next level. Molly had asked just last month what was going on with them, but back then, he didn’t have much of a response. She’d need to know him better as she wasn’t just to take some extended one-night stand back to her house to meet her kid. He doesn’t blame her. He can’t let his past rule him and prevent him from moving forward. He wants a chance at a normal life. He wants this, a future where he can close his eyes at night and not imagine a bleeding heart propped up against a cage, graying and drying out with each passing day.

He screws his eyes shut against the steaming dirty rice and gumbo being ladled into bowls on the table. The squash blossoms piled on a platter. Crawfish boiled with their heads still intact. Hannibal circles the table, fussing about spoons and napkins, before taking a seat, across from him, waiting for him to join him at the table. 

Will licks his lips and forces himself to look at Molly. Sweet Molly, who is actually presently standing before him. Close enough to grasp, like his future. He makes his choice.

“These,” Will begins, “are from a case I worked when I was at the FBI.”

“Which case? Would I have heard of it?” she sounds in awe.

“Absolutely,” he responds.

She is delighted as he begins to share the details of the case. And that is the power of storytelling. 

He mentions the girls he couldn’t save and the girl he did but ultimately couldn’t. He condenses that tale. And makes no mention at how often he ate at Hannibal’s table. Nor, now that he thinks of it, his honeypot scheme at all. Details are unimportant at this point. He sums it up by saying that “I was the guy who caught Hannibal Lecter and he made me pay for it, many times over.” He thinks that says enough. 

He waits for Hannibal to actually appear like smoke through the window. A cloud does pass momentarily over the sun, and for a moment, the room darkens. In the shadows, he thinks he can detect the dark skeletal figure that had haunted his thoughts when his brain had been on fire. As he catches its sharp features crouched in the corner, Will misses how bright Molly’s eyes have gotten. Something akin to hero worship stands in them now.

“You made it through,” she pulls him back to her. “You’re still standing.”

“I am,” he states with a conviction he didn’t realize he possessed. 

It doesn’t escape him that he stands before her exposed, half-naked. He reaches for her as her hand cups around his chest, his heart. He kisses her and stares across at Hannibal, still seated at the table in his thoughts. 

He can’t help it. It’s so easy for the memories to wash over him. Of the time Hannibal’s stockinged foot scratched at his ankle and then his thigh under the table, impatient with Will rebuffing his past advances. He was being forward so Will could not deny him now. The insistent look on Hannibal’s face, vulnerable and exposed as the time Hannibal had asked him, point blank, if their relationship were more personal or professional, as if testing the waters to ask Will on a date. He could only soak in how Hannibal had crawled on his hands and knees (like the snake slithering under the house) and planted his face in his lap until he was damp and arching off the chair, conquered. 

Will is determined to win this one. Like a good friend, Hannibal has shown him the power of seduction. 

He lets Molly kiss him. She’s a good kisser. He kisses back, slowly undressing her. But she loses herself in it. Has him pressed against the wall. His belt hits the floor and he gasps. She is face to face with his stomach scar and she hasn’t run. Instead, she kisses along the length of it and Will forces back the tears that threaten to fall. He scrunches his eyes closed against being touched with such tenderness and compassion. This should be what he wants. And yet something’s wrong about it.

A dark digit runs plush against his mouth until he parts his lips and lets it slide in. The dark figure from his hallucinations has taken up residence along his back, cushioning Will between the wall and Molly. The finger hooks inside his mouth and Will moans over it. 

His eyes roll back in his head. It tastes so good. Like the dinner waiting for him on the fancy spread. Like home. 

He rides along the wave of pleasure, and when he looks down, Molly is palming his crotch and unzipping his pants. The fabric pools around his ankles and he can’t move. He is caged in, between her and the darkness. 

He watches as she goes down on her knees at his weak protests that she doesn’t have to. He knows that look in her eyes. The hunger. He can have this if he wants. It’s his for the taking. A fresh start. He ignores the glare he's getting from the table. 

The finger hooked in his mouth pulls his head until he turns to look at the skeletal figure standing behind him. This close, he realizes for the first time (that his subconscious will allow it) that this monster too is Hannibal. 

He can’t stop himself. The shock of it. The way he has pressed his backside against its jutting hipbones. He comes. 

He flushes with shame and Molly insists that he shouldn’t be embarrassed. She stands smiling. And he smiles too because when he looks at the table Hannibal is gone. His fancy table settings too. Even the shadow man has been wiped away. 

There’s just sunlight and cake. 

He looks at her with such relief, such awe, she laughs. No one has ever looked at her like that before. 

“Will Graham,” she drawls, “you keep looking at me like that you can have your cake and eat it too.”

His face lines into something serious and she reaches back and dips her finger in the cake. She brings the cake to his lips and he licks it off, smiling.

He backs her up, laying her out on the table. He makes fast work of getting rid of her jeans. He sets his knees down on the bench, as if in prayer before her. When her hand splays out, bracing herself to accept his worship, cake frosting splatters everywhere. He licks a bit off her knee and savors the sweet taste. He can get used to this. In the pause, Molly makes a weak protest. 

She came to please him, and besides, “It’s your birthday.”

He presses his face through the folds of flesh, to her center of pleasure, inhaling her sharp aroma, the tang of her desire and accepting that he can have this too. He’ll make the taste of her his new home. She is glorious to him. She made it all go away.


End file.
